Page 2 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

His brows creased, rightfully so at the idiocy I’d spewed at the most inconvenient time. “Why would you think so?”

“Because what I want is not what I deserve.”

“Says who?”

“The one I wanted.”

He understood. Maybe he had always understood. “You don’t have to do this, Thora.”

“Iskyla Krigborn has been eating through my lands inch by inch, claiming them right under my nose with my people’s permission. Half of the Isline villages have already been taken, Kilian. My court has finally settled and the people are no longer talking of their fears regarding an enemy queen, but rather the incompetent one currently ruling them. This is me pushing my hand.”

“Peacefully. And you know these people have never handled anything with peace in mind.”

“You and Snow really need to take some time apart. She’s really not rubbing on you in a good way.” I grabbed my heavy skirts and led us out of my room and towards the winter gardens where the ceremony would take place. The cold…it would keep me sane. It had kept me sane for so long alone in this kingdom. The cold was my consolation price in the deal that my sister had made for me. It was now my only friend. But the cold didn’t speak, and I was missing being spoken to.

Skadi stood at the garden entrance, solemn and unbothered by the marriage that she had gone to great lengths to avoid. She bowed her head at me when I passed by her but said nothing.

“I wanted you to sit amongst the guests,” I said, halting.

“This marriage is not something I wish to celebrate.”

“Skadi, please.”

“You will be miserable.”

“Yet dressed well and with an expensive taste that my father in law’s diamond trade has promised to quell,” I said, flashing her my emerald necklace, heavy earrings and crown. If I’d marry, I was going to marry as rich as I could. Emil, Erik’s father, he was the richest there was. If he was a widower, I would have married him instead of his spoiled son.

She eyed my neck for a moment. “You’ve never been fond of diamonds. Your taste has always been for a much simpler rock.”

That was the moment I bowed back and returned by Kilian’s side to walk the remaining length to the altar.

Elias, too, had apparently refused to sit among the guests, positioned by the edge of the celebrations where my guard remained. My right-hand man only shook his head at me even though he’d been the one to introduce me to Erik.

I stopped at the entrance of the white rose gardens covered in soft snow. The small sounds at the distance where the altar had been set flew in all around—excitedly, people awed and gasped at me. All except the front row where my sister, Nia and their children were all sat.

Kilian offered me his arm. “Eren is here. He can walk you down the aisle. Or Alaric. Cai, too? Though I can’t promise a ruly ceremony if he is present. He wasn’t a big fan of this.”

At the mention of my brother, I dropped my eyes down, forcing myself not to look his way. “I want you to do it,” I said. “I don’t feel comfortable with it being anyone else.” Kilian was perhaps the reason why I had managed to stand this far on my own two feet.

All was so pure and white and pale while I made my way between lines of chairs framing a long altar laid with white rose petals that melted against the pristine snowy ground.

So pale the world was all of the sudden under the brisk summer sun that was but mere decoration in the skies, offering no warmth. Not even the god I served deigned us with a little ounce of his presence. Not a cloud in sight. No signs of winter anywhere but the one always present. Whatever snow surrounded us had already settled from days ago.

And the faint, strange heartbeat I’d heard in the wind all day this morning had suddenly turned so dull and faint, I could almost miss it—if only to drown out my thoughts.

Erik stood under the arbour of white roses and baby breaths. His sea-coloured eyes were pale, too. And his smile—pale. It had always been pale, empty, only a trained glamour he used as a shield when he was thrown into unflattering situations—arguments, boring conversations, and now this, our wedding. Surely, he just as everyone would have preferred to marry someone he loved, but there was very little power love could grant, and none that could help me against Iskyla.

The sound of the strange heartbeat returned, growing louder the closer I got to Erik. It wasn’t my own. I could feel my own, cold heartbeat quietly in an entirely different pace from that I was hearing in the wind. So, whose heart was I hearing beat in the wind?

Kilian was reluctant to let me go once we stood close to the altar where the Isjordian priest was waiting. His hand had curled onto my forearm a little too tightly.

I shot him a pleading look and he sighed, pulling back so I could take Erik’s extended hand.

“You look astonishing,” my husband-to-be murmured in my ear as we turned to face the priest.

“As do you,” I politely threw back at him.

Whatever words came out of the Isjordian priest’s mouth bounced back into the open scenery around. Only when Erik nudged my hand did my attention return, voices returning again. The sound of the strange heartbeat disappearing.